The Actress in High Life eBook

Lady Mabel’s habits now underwent a change,
which proved that her late mode of life, and her morning
and evening levees of epaulettes, had been
quite as much the result of necessity as of choice.
Her father’s house was still much frequented
by her gay and dashing comrades. But whenever
there was a large company to dinner, or any other cause
brought many of the gentlemen to head-quarters, she
made a point of having Mrs. Shortridge at hand to
countenance and sustain her; and in return she would
often mount her horse early and canter into Elvas,
followed only by a groom, to shut herself up with Mrs.
Shortridge for a whole morning, doubtless in the enjoyment
of those confidential feminine chats, for which she
had longed so much. On these occasions the representatives
of the ruder sex seldom gained admittance, except
that L’Isle would now and then drop in for an
hour, he being too great a favorite with Mrs. Shortridge
to be excluded; and, for a time, he showed no disposition
to abuse his special privilege.

It was on one of these occasions that L’Isle
discovered that with all his assiduity in acquiring
a thorough knowledge of the peculiar and interesting
land in which he had now spent more than four years—­an
assiduity, on the result of which he much prided himself,
and which had done him good service in his profession—­there
was still one important point that he had quite overlooked.
He knew absolutely nothing of the botany of this region,
nor, indeed, of any other. He made this discovery
suddenly on hearing Lady Mabel express the interest
she felt in this science, and her hope of finding many
opportunities of pursuing it in a country whose Flora
was so new to her. He at once began to supply
this omission by borrowing from her half a dozen books
on the subject. In two or three days he reappeared,
armed with a huge bunch of wild flowers and plants,
and professed to have mastered the technicalities
sufficiently to enter at once on the practical study
of the science in the field. Unless he deceived
himself, he was an astonishing fast learner. Lady
Mabel told him that she had heard that poeta nascitur,
and now she believed it from analogy; for he was certainly
born a botanist. He rebutted the sarcasm by showing
that he had the terms stamen, pistil, calix, corolla,
capsule, and a host of others at the tip of his tongue;
though possibly, had he been called upon to apply
each in its proper place, he would have been like
a certain student of geometry we once knew, who, by
aid of a good memory alone, could demonstrate all Euclid’s
theorems, without understanding one of them, provided
the diagrams were small enough to be hidden by his
hand, so you could not detect him in pointing to the
wrong angle and line.